Conventionally, there has been known an ink jet recording apparatus which relatively moves a recording sheet (recording medium) with respect to a recording head and discharges an ink droplet to the recording sheet while moving the recording head in a transverse direction of the recording sheet over a carriage, thereby carrying out a recording operation.
Such a recording head discharges the ink droplet from the nozzle to the recording sheet, thereby carrying out the recording operation. Therefore, there is a possibility that an opening of the nozzle might be clogged to cause a recording failure due to a rise in a viscosity of an ink which is caused by an evaporation of the ink from the opening of the nozzle, a solidification of the ink, an adhesion of dust, and furthermore, a mixture of bubbles.
For this reason, the ink jet recording apparatus generally comprises a cap means for covering a nozzle surface of a recording head with a cap member in a non-recording operation and wiper means for cleaning the nozzle surface of the recording head by means of a wiper member if necessary.
A normal ink jet recording apparatus carries out an operation for sucking an ink in a nozzle in a state in which the nozzle surface is covered with the cap member and then wiping the nozzle surface by means of the wiper member, thereby removing the residual ink.
More specifically, the wiper means serves to sweep away the ink remaining on the nozzle surface and has been used to eliminate a drawback that the ink remaining on the nozzle surface is dried to clog the nozzle.
There has been proposed an ink jet recording apparatus for effectively collecting an ink swept away by a wiper member and preventing a contamination caused by an ink waste liquid dropped from the wiper member and the generation of a driving failure of an apparatus (for example, see JP-A-2005-81594 (paragraphs 0033 to 0037 and FIGS. 7 and 8).